Nina Totenberg: 'You can't do good investigative work without making some people mad'
This profile was originally published in the "15 Who Made a Difference" feature in Current, Dec. 16, 1991
By John Wilner
In the 16 years Nina Totenberg has been NPR's legal affairs correspondent, she has built a reputation as a savvy and tenacious reporter. For most of that time, however, she remained largely unknown outside of the relatively small circle of fellow journalists and dedicated NPR listeners.
That is, until October [1991], when her disclosure of sexual harassment charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas--followed by a heated exchange with Sen. Alan Simpson--catapulted Totenberg to national prominence.
Now it's rare to hear a discussion of the hearings or press ethics without someone invoking the name: Nina. One public radio station, WDET, Detroit, has gone so far as to give away "Nina Totenberg Bucks" with the motto "In Nina We Trust" as part of its fundraising efforts.
Totenberg's Thomas report came after the nominee's initial hearings had concluded without a major hitch, when it appeared he would easily win Senate confirmation. Two days before the Senate Judiciary Committee vote, Totenberg broke the story on Morning Edition that Anita Hill had told the committee that she had been sexually harassed while working for Thomas in two federal agencies. Although a Newsday reporter had similar information, Hill's interview with Totenberg was her first contact with the press.
The story provoked public outrage and forced the committee to resume the hearings to look specifically into Hill's allegations.
As Totenberg covered the resulting Judiciary Committee spectacle and co-anchored the joint PBS-NPR coverage of the hearings, she became a subject of interviews and stories--particularly after engaging in a verbal shoving match with Simpson following their joint appearance on Nightline, in which the Wyoming Republican accused her of lacking objectivity.
Totenberg's high profile has not receded with Thomas' eventual confirmation. She remains the focus of a congressional investigation to determine how the information on Hill was leaked, as well as a national debate on journalistic ethics.
"Uncanny way" with a case
Totenberg, 47, who joined NPR in 1975, after serving as Washington correspondent for New Times magazine, is widely viewed as the nation's premier law reporter, and has numerous awards--including a duPont-Columbia silver baton--to prove it.
"I am unaware of anybody who covers the Supreme Court more thoroughly and with greater clarity and details than Nina Totenberg," says Ken Davis, program director at WBEZ, Chicago. "She's one of the most valuable resources in public radio."
"She has an uncanny way of packaging the important facts of a case with its legal significance and curiosity items that make it extremely interesting and riveting," says Jack Doppelt of Northwestern University's school of journalism. "It's a real talent."
Not bad for someone who dropped out of Boston University (to work for a newspaper) and never went to either journalism or law school. "In many ways, it was a hidden advantage," Totenberg says of her lack of legal background. "After all, you're communicating with people who aren't lawyers. You have to speak their language, not lawyerese. If I had a hard time understanding something, I had to get it boiled down to the point that I could convey it to the audience."
As Totenberg's stature has risen, so has the network she works for."She's raised the visibility of NPR in ways that probably no one else has," says Brooke Gladstone, former editor of All Things Considered. "Stories in the New York Times that mention NPR are usually there because of Nina. I can't imagine that anyone has broken more stories for the network than she has. That's worth a lot."
"Sneer in her tone"
In her willingness to deal with top-level political conflicts, Totenberg has risked being drawn into them.
Her role in torpedoing an earlier Supreme Court nominee--she reported in 1987 that Douglas Ginsburg had once been a marijuana smoker--along with her recent claim that she herself had been sexually harassed as a young reporter, led to charges during the Thomas hearings that her work was politically tinged.
"We received an unusual number of complaints about NPR's objectivity during the Thomas hearings," says Davis, "from people who believed that the coverage was less than impartial and that it tended to favor the anti-Thomas position. These differed from the routine complaints we get from conservative listeners who say that the NPR people get their checks directly from the Kremlin."
On the other hand, Davis notes, "we also received a lot of calls from people who said essentially, 'Right on, Nina.'"
"I think there was a sneer in her tone that you could not mistake," says Doppelt. "There was a visible irritation that she conveyed when she was debriefing people as they left the hearing room. I think that everyone could tell where she was coming from, and I trust that normally she has the ability to put that aside."
"I don't know any professional journalists who think that I became an advocate for one side or the other," Totenberg says. "When you're in the eye of hurricane like that, you have to be very cautious, and deliberately not do stories that have too much of an analytical edge. The story was so hot by itself, it didn't need any help or juicing up."
NPR news chief Bill Buzenberg says that NPR and WETA, which produced the joint TV-radio hearings coverage, discussed whether Totenberg should continue to co-anchor the hearings after she broke the Hill story, and decided to keep her on, due to her expertise on the subject.
"There was no such discussion here that I am aware of--ever," says Totenberg. "I raised the subject and said that I expected that, given the reaction to the story, some might suggest it, and that I didn't think that it would be appropriate. Nobody ever made the suggestion to me."
Conflict inevitable
Even those who praise Totenberg's hearings coverage say she became part of the story.
"I don't think she chose to be part of the story, I think Alan Simpson made her part of the story," says Gladstone. "Now, she could have laid low and not answered his charges, but that's just not the nature of her character. She's not a retiring person. She's direct, and she favors candor over diplomacy."
"I don't have any objection to reporters appearing on Nightline," says Davis. "What I object to is when you have something like what happened to Nina, and it becomes part of the story, with Sen. Simpson going on about how she used 'the F-word.' I don't want my network associated with that."
"I think there clearly was an attempt by some to switch the focus from the Thomas hearings and the charges to the so-called leak," Totenberg says. "Sen. Simpson has since said that I was just doing my job, and that I'm a fine journalist. He has backed off entirely."
"You can't do good investigative work without making some people mad," she adds. "I just keep my head down and do my job. Whether liberals or conservatives like or dislike it is of no importance to me whatsoever."
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